For the Illiterate Adult, Learning to Read Produces Enormous Brain Changes

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/for-the-illiterate-adult-learning-to-read-produces-enormous-brain-changes/?WT.mc_id=SA_FB_MB_BLOG

Surprises turn up in scans of the newly literate—a possible boon for dyslexics
By Gary Stix on May 24, 2017

•••••

In the report, a broad-ranging group of researchers—from universities in Germany, India and the Netherlands—taught reading to 21 women, all about 30 years of age from near the city of Lucknow in northern India, comparing them to a placebo group of nine women. The majority of those who learned to read could not recognize a word of Hindi at the beginning of the study. After six months, the group had reached a first-grade proficiency level.

When the researchers conducted brain scans—using functional magnetic resonance imaging—they were startled. Areas deep below the wrinkled surface, the cortex, in the brains of the new learners had changed. Their results surprised them because most reading-related brain activity was thought to involve the cortex.

•••••

What did you find, what did you expect to find and what surprised you about your ultimate results?

We expected to replicate previous findings that changes are limited to the outer layer of the brain, the cortex, which is known to adapt quickly to new challenges. We found the expected changes in the cortex but we also observed that the learning process leads to a reorganization that extends to deep brain structures in the thalamus and the brainstem. The relatively young phenomenon of human literacy therefore changes brain regions that are very old in evolutionary terms and already core parts of mice and other mammalian brains.

•••••